Sunday, December 4, 2016

Saturday on the Town

Sometimes it's not so bad when a plan falls through.

We'd planned to see the exhibit of Reformation Art at the
Minneapolis Institute of Arts. (First time out of Germany in 300 years!) But
the more we read about Luther, the less compelling that idea sounded. On the
morning we were planning to visit I had trouble securing tickets on the museum
website, and we decided to scotch the idea entirely—at least for the time
being.

So, an empty Saturday yawned in front of us.

Our first stop was to the Bell Museum of Natural History,
which is scheduled to close permanently in a few weeks. (They're moving to a
new building on the St. Paul Campus.) Being on campus again brought up a few
vague memories, mostly pleasant. The very idea
of being a student is pleasant. Hanging out with your friends, reading books,
working part-time. (Gee. It sounds a lot like today.)

As we approached the Bell Museum, I was reminded that I took
E. Adamson Hoebel's final anthropology class
in the auditorium there. For many years that hallowed space was also the venue
for the University Film Society, where I first saw Jules and Jim, Pierrot le Fou, Chimes at Midnight, Tree of the Wooden Clogs, L'Avventura, and many other classics in
an era when a film screening was the only
way you could see a rare or European film.

We requested the senior rate at the front desk, and then I
said, "I used to take little kids on tours through this place. Is that
good for an additional discount?"

Both of the women behind the counter were barely out of
their teens. "We get quite a few former tour guides through here,"
one of them said, smiling. "maybe we could come up with something."

"Well, it would be pretty hard to verify," I said.
"Anyway, we're happy to chip in."

By a stroke of luck, the Minnesota Ornithological Union was
holding their annual Paper Session in the auditorium. We're not members, but
the man in the lobby said, "Go on in and listen to a few of the
presentations. If you find it worthwhile, pay on your way out."

I looked at the schedule:

Tracking
Movement Patterns of Common Terns in the Great Lakes Region

Contaminant
Research on Loon's Relating to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

Wastewater Stabilization Pond Birding Access
Initiative

Owls to Orchids: Magic and Mystery in our
Northern Bogs

Genetic Insights into the Evolution of
Red-winged Blackbirds

Mapping
Change and Minnesota Biodiversity Atlas: Citizen Science and Museum Practice in
the Digital Age

Kirtland's Warbler Population Status in the
Upper Midwest

I mean, it might be interesting. Or not.

A session had just concluded, but stepping inside the
auditorium, I got the impression that most of the seats were already spoken for. We
went upstairs to take a look at the famous dioramas, only to find the halls
clogged with birders chatting in twos and threes or looking at the booths that
had been set up by a variety of ornithological and "outdoor"
organizations.

Among them we spotted an old family friend, Chet Meyers, at a
booth for a society
dedicated to bringing back the red-headed woodpecker.

"We saw a red-headed woodpecker on the trail up into
the hills at Sherburne last summer," I said.

"We've been working to get a nesting pair up
there," he said, "and there's also one on the nearby Mahnomen
Trail."

The woman behind the
table for the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden urged me to take one of their
newsletters. I declined, telling her that I was very familiar with it, because
I had designed it. That idea didn't quite sink in, but little matter. We were soon
discussing great horned owls, acorn flour, and buckthorn removal like old friends.

At the Sax-Zim Bog display I asked the man behind the table
what he thought of the Trailside Restaurant in Meadowlands.

"It's OK, "
he replied, "but I usually go to Wilbert's over in Cotton."

Then I said, "I've never seen a boreal chickadee. Do
you have any ideas about where I might get lucky?"

"Sure," he said. Then he grabbed a map of the bog,
which extends over many square miles, and proceeded to mark three places that
could hardly miss.

The booths were interesting and informative, but the
dioramas were better. I have looked at them many times, though I see a lot more
now than I did when I was twenty—the wolves, the bear, the caribou, but also
the smaller displays with martin and fisher, rough-legged hawk, woodcock, lynx.
I looked lovingly at the marshland exhibits that bored me forty years ago,
largely because at the time I didn't recognize any of the birds.

And I looked
very fondly at the landscapes rendered in the background to the dioramas
because they were not only intrinsically beautiful, nut because I now recognize
many of them, having been there, and because winter is approaching and pine
woods and gray cliffs and open water are the things many of us will soon be
yearning for.

Our next stop was for lunch at Obento-ya,
a Japanese bistro on Como Avenue in the Van Cleve neighborhood north of
Dinkytown—a neighborhood previously associated in my mind largely with the onion rings at nearby Manning's Bar, and the derelict grain elevator with the word Bunge on top where young urban adventurers injure themselves with some degree of regularity nowadays.

Then it was off to the St. Paul campus of the university, with
a few stops in between: first at Potter's Pasties, which occupies a truly bohemian space in the
basement of a convenience store on E. Como, and then at the Sisu cross-country
ski and sauna shop on Eustis to look at the back-country skis. (Winter is just
around the corner.)

As we approached the Ag campus we also happened
to pass the site of the new Bell Museum, still under construction. But our
destination was the Goldstein Gallery, tucked away on the third floor of McNeal
Hall. A forty-year design retrospective was supposed to open at 1:30, but at
1:45 the gallery was still dark, and we made our way back to the car. On
another day I might have been irritated or disappointed, but looking into the
gallery spaces through the window, I could see there wasn't much to the exhibit,
and the view from the third floor of the building out across the state
fairgrounds was superb.

The sun had come out,
and suddenly it didn't seem like such a big deal to hightail it down to the
Barnes and Noble in Galleria, at the opposite end of town, to hear Michael
Chabon read.

That B&N has been located on two floors of the same
high-class suburban mini-mall for decades, but it recently moved to a different
space across the hall on the lower level to become one of three
"flagship" Barnes and Noble stores in the country offering a new
concept—bookstore plus restaurant; the others are in suburbs of New York City
and San Francisco. So the woman on the floor told me.

"We have the advantage in that we've been in business
for years, know the stock, and have a well-trained staff. The other two stores
are starting from scratch."

She also liked the food in the restaurant. "There's
nothing frozen. Everything's made from scratch."

I was surprised to see that far more space in the store's
music section was devoted to vinyl LPs than to CDs. There were even two
turntables on sale! Was Gibt? Yet the sight of them made me want to hook up my own turntable again.

The revamped store opened just last Tuesday—too early to develop much of a
remainder section. But I must say they did well to snag Chabon as their
inaugural author. (Don't you think?)

I have never read anything by Chabon, though Hilary is a big
fan, and Wonder Boys is one of my
favorite movies. He read briefly and then conducted a long Q &A full of humor, insight,
humility, charm. Enough, perhaps, to fill a second blog....

About Me

The Macaroni blog is dedicated to the subjects that have enlivened the print edition of Macaroni for more than twenty-five years - travel, films, food, ideas, music ... you name it. My name is John Toren. I write the blog. If you're interested in lengthier forays into the same fields track down a copy of my new book,All the Things You Are or my previous book By the Way. For a closer look at the state of Minnesota, check out my travel book, The Seven States of Minnesota.